benlehman | Gamer Question

Gamer Question

People who like L5R: Why?

Why do you like a top-heavy, orientalist, highly westernized fantasy of Japan that is simultaneously less gameable and less interesting than the "real thing" (either a historical period or something based on Japanese myth.) Real Samurai had complicated lives of politics, betrayal, war, and power. Y'know, human issues. L5R Samurai seem to worry mostly about "taint" and "honor" and kill themselves all the damned time.

Not to mention that China and Korea are reduced to "the shadowlands" that are EVIL and full of "taint."

And please don't say it is the system. 'cause that is a whole nother rant.

(Clarification: I have no trouble believing that a lot of people like L5R. Just that twice today I have seen folks who I think of as rational, sane people, very hip to racial, cultural, and historical issues, praise the game. I'm really curious -- why? Am I missing something?)

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When you say, "less gameable", you are expressing your own tastes!

L5R is uncomplicated; everyone has the same big issue and the story revolves around how that one issue affects every person differently. I imagine that an archetypal L5R story involves a tight-knit group of samurai who are pulled apart by their differing interpretations of honour.

Plus, everyone has a pretty, built-in colour scheme!

Aimed straight at me, huh? :) I consider it fun mind-trash. Though, I pretty much run it as human issues + high fantasy anyway.

But here's the breakdown:
- Simple good vs. evil concept (with some shades of grey)= mindless fun
- High fantasy elements (undead, magic, gods, etc.) = adolescent kick
- Setting where ALL the characters are asian, competant, and in positions of power, and there are characters who DON'T know martial arts(though there is a heavy focus)
- I can play an asian character and not have the assumption "Oh, it's just because you're asian"

But do I recognize many of the issues you speak of? Yes. And also, I really can't see myself playing with the folks who play the 2D samurai("Daily seppuku").

Yup, aimed straight at you :-)

I find your explanation pretty reasonable...

yrs--
--Ben

And, yes, I also recognize that the system is built on the poor assumptions of standardized Sim for Sim sake (with the text praying for the wonderful Impossible Thing Before Breakfast), but aside from that, was there something or many things in particular that turn it into a rant fest for you?

Example:

The mechanics of raises seem silly to me. The fact that you have to take a raise before you roll means that there are breakpoints in difficulty -- for an XkY die pool, you will always want to take Z raises and no more.

Usually, Z = 0.

This sucks.

A cooler thing is to allow raises after the roll.

yrs--
--Ben

I agree. TNs AND Raises together are a cruddy way of dealing with difficulty issues. For one, how much "better" a raise is, is completely undefined. My drift basically steals the rollover success from Sorcerer- each raise = an extra rolled die to some other action.

That isn't entirely accurate. Raises "raise" the risk you take of failure for a more difficult action. For something like blind perception rolls, the gm has the ability to add raises onto your roll themselves when you make the roll, or change what info you get as though you had called raises. In combat though it makes it so when you specifically are trying to do harder things, you have a greater chance of failure. If all raises were called after you rolled it would be pointless. You would never fail to take the right choice in combat as you would know you did not roll enough to be able to knock the man's sword from his hand, or feint, or whatever.

As to usually not making them? Also false. The dice pools on the current system make taking raises fairly easy, on top of a ton of static bonuses written into the system. My combat char can roll 9k4 on the attack, without spending void. This means on average I can easily take 2-4 raises on the attack, with reasonable chance of success.

Dude, chill. You are not your game system. You also don't need to go rooting around in the livejournal archives to defend it.

The fact of the matter is that, for a XkY die pool against difficult Z, there will be an ideal number of raises N. Always. The same. Number. This is mathematics -- the same thing is true of Power Attack and Expertise in d20, or any mechanic where you reduce your chances of success before the roll in order to improve the results after.

I think that's dull. I don't like it when a game penalizes me for trying something cool, or different, or out of the ordinary.

Wow, I recieved incredibly late notification on that. Oops.

My explanation is that Rokugan has as much to do with historical Japan as Middle-Earth has to do with medieval Norway.

Nothing.

Does something itch in my head about white people futzing around with Japanese lore and mixing and matching everything gaijin see as Asian?

Yeah, on some level it bugs me.

But on another level I want every damned myth, every culture, every religion, every text to be our playground.

Am I making sense, here, Ben?

Sort of. The thing is, L5R isn't about Japanese culture at all. It is simply about western perceptions of Japanese culture: a strange, artificial thing that was built up starting with the defeat of the Russian fleet and continuing through 'til today. It is purely a western myth.

I can and do take my mythology from around the world. I guess it is just disappointing to me that L5R takes no Asian myths and stories at all. The samurai game that I want is about Japan, not about Europe's insecurities.

yrs--
--Ben

"The samurai game that I want is about Japan, not about Europe's insecurities."

You did lol me here.

You really don't want to see what Erick W. did with 'Mythic China', then. Look at the credits. Then ask

denyse how she feels. And stand well back.

I have heard a tiny corner of that rant, though I'd be happy to hear the whole thing whenever she's got the *heh* time.

yrs--
--Ben

Also: the CCG is a rather elegantly designed one.

It's also a fascinating look at the way the West does see Japan...

Thomas

From all accounts, the CCG is an excellent game. Never played it myself.

It would be fascinating to look at the way that the West sees Japan if it wasn't so hard to find anything Asian at all in RPGs.

yrs--
--Ben

I think the solution is to get people from those countries, or at least with a solid knowledge of those cultures, to write the RPGs. Easier said than done, I know. I remember asking you about Japanese RPGs once. You told me about this "Ender's Game with Giant Robots" kind of thing which sounded cool. But no samurai. :-)

Matt

I'll ask Andy about that when he has a moment, which may be a while.

Have you looked at Sengoku? I am told it has a very good grasp on Historical Japan.

Hi, anonymouse guy! Got a name?

Yeah, Sengoku would be great if I was interested in history. But I'm really interested in stories, myths, and legends.

yrs--
--Ben

In other related news, I have this Samurai RPG rattling around in my head based around the four seasons.

I think there would be one conflict per PC per season or something.

I just remember talking to one of my students about how each season has a part of nature to observe. Star-gazing in the winter, leaves in autumn, cherry-blossoms in spring...shit, I'm blanking on summer.

Anyway, it'd be neat to have a game built around those festivals.

Thassall.

That's kind of beautiful. I'd be interested to hear more about it someday.

Sumemer makes me think of biting into a fresh tomato. That's not very Japanese! It might get you thinking, though.

Shreyas is too modest to mention this, but it sounds a little like his Snow from Korea, which you ought to steal from liberally.

Regardless, I am excited at the prospect of a samurai game coming from such a high quality source.

yrs--
--Ben

Blah. If you were to find game-bits of SFK that are worth stealing, I'd be impressed. The strength of that game is in its prose.

Don't be too excited. It is only in the vaguest-of-ideas-stage.

I don't know. I keep making up reasons that someone might like it (I don't know the mechanics, just the setting), but they're not good.

See, Tolkein made up Middle Earth because it bothered him that all the stories about England that that people had were (Mon Dieu!) French. So he made up stuff that used actual English lore and ran with it on his own.

L5R is closer to Le Morte D'Artur than Tolkein's works. It's another society making stuff up about an alien one, and getting no closer to understanding it.

It's like having an Alan Quatermain RPG, you know? Where everything takes place in a magical foreign land where the people are a different color and they're savage!

My issues with it (mechanics aside) are yours, Ben. Even assuming that you're not playing Mountain Witch because it does all that hippy stuff where you get to play a protagonist, there's still Sengoku (http://www.goldrushgames.com/sengoku.html) and GURPS Japan (http://www.sjgames.com/gurps/books/Japan/) which treat their subject matter with so much more respect. And I don't say that because of some sort of kneejerk multiculturalist attitude, either. I say that because the stuff is fucking interesting. The history's good, the fiction's good, the myth is good.

I'd really dig a game that took place in India with Upanishad goodness, but I'd be really disappointed if it had the level of research and respect shown in L5R.

You know what it's like? It's like the Hercules TV show.

(obligatory knee-jerk pointer to http://www.heliograph.com/diana/ whenever Hercules is mentioned...)

I've been idly working on one of those games. HeroQuest in Mythic India.
I fear it may end up one of my "Great White Games", if I may borrow ben's phrase.

NO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

yrs--
--Ben

Hey, instead of doing that, why don't you make a game we can play? Come on, the world needs that game! I know so little about Indian mythology (having read part of the Bhagavad Gita only), but I can see there's cool stuff there. Love, violence, huge stakes, vast battlefields, dramatic magic. Make the damn game!

... but don't make it as long as the Upanishads. Make ways to model the stuff that's there. Give lots of examples for Russian Jews like me who have to stand waaaaay over here and look at cool stuff you've got.

I'll trade you one: a game I've been unable to really get rolling is a Bronze Age Middle East game, mostly taking place in Mesopotamia. Efritim in the desert, four-winged angels that blind you with their faces, tribal gods, strategic marriage, sorcery, and riches measured in children and sheep.

I've wanted to do a game that featured polygamy for a while and my current group isn't down with that in Dogs in the Vineyard, the wusses. So I'll have to write it on my own. N.B. the previous sentence does not make sense.

Hey, Ben, I actually do like this game (and yeloson, we have an Asian player in our group, Malaysian Chinese, actually). Why? Drift, my friend, drift. I mix in some elements of real Japanese culture, but also I enjoy exploring the purely fantastic culture that is described in the books. I also pretty much ignore there metaplot entirely. My game focuses on the inter-clan politics and the conflicting loyalties to clan, friends, and empire. Those opposing forces are what drives the game, and are implied but not described in the text of the game. That, and some real fun powertripping as the players get to higher and higher ranks.

I mean, fair enough, but is the text serving as a tool, a speedbump, or a crutch here?

yrs--
--Ben

I think it serves us well as a tool, since it provides some common ground for everyone. Each player has taken and studied the material on their own particular clan, and it has provided inspiration as they develop their characters and gives everyone a basic vocabulary to discuss the game world. All in all, I think it has been valuable. The system itself is serviceable, but there are some fundamental flaws in the mechanic that I mostly just paper over.

Ben, I just read your bricolage post at your other blog. That is totally the point of our L5R game. We've bricolaged the fuck out of the setting, with the game book canon mixing with every player's slightly different conception of Asian culture and what elements each player is interested in. That's why we like it, we made it ours.

I can dig it.

I just think that the raw material is... less than good.

yrs--
--Ben

Hey, I feel you on the whole thing. That's why, I can dig it, despite the issues.

If an American has a vision of Japan that he's imagined and fallen in love with....well, he's in love with the vision. He doesn't know anything about the real thing. I think there's a lesson in there for us overeducated game designers.

Uhm, if you mean that I ought to somehow write orientalist tripe to satisfy an unknowing and uncaring "mass audience" that exists somewhere out there -- you're probably talking to the wrong guy.

After all, I am not the right person to write that. I detest it. Why should I write about something I detest? It will be unpleasant for me, and it will be less high-quality for the audience, because my detestation of the material will show through in the writing.

As I said in the initial post, I'm not surprised that the game exists, and is popular. I was just curious why people who were very keen to cultural issues (your "overeducated game designers") were also very fond of it, and I think I'm roughly got the answer to that question.

yrs--
--Ben

Not at all what I was saying.

Cool, well, what's the lesson for us overeducated game designers, then?

1: Keep in mind the symbols and associations with which the audience will be familiar. Consider Exalted, for example. They though carefully about the race, age, and gender of the signature characters; and the effect that would have on the audience. The "Cleric" type is black, because they thought a black character would seem less preachy and more crusading. The setting does not have an analogue to Black American Churches. But the audience knows the stereotypes surrounding Black American Churches. So race becomes an effective way to communicate.

2: You do have to keep the audience in mind. One of my favorite games is Unknown Armies, but it fails somewhat in this department. Its a wonderful game - if you're a veteran gamer with a good education and a healthy dose of cynicism. If you're not, you're likely to miss a lot of the irony and think the whole thing is just kind of dumb.

BTW, a while back you asked me why I disliked Indie games. Sorry about not getting back to you sooner. I don't like to talk about it, because A) I think the concept of indie games is cool and want to be supportive and B)Its a little hard to know why I don't usually like 'em. I just see the final product, not the process at work.

One problem is that they tend to be very short. $20 for 100 A5 pages is a tough sell. Often the ideas as well as the text is underdevoloped. Where are the character hooks, the plot ideas, the setting?
Indie games rarely support the style of play I perfer. I like more crunch. Not D&D level crunch but more than Kill Puppies.
Finally, the intended PCs and intended story have to be engaging. I don't but Starwars games because I don't like Starwars. I'm not going to play Cat cuz it just doesn't seem cool to me. I know plenty of people who would love Cat, but hey, its just nor for me.

So, yeah, those are my thoughts, take 'em for what their worth.

I guess I just can't bring myself to care about my "audience" at all, though I don't have any contempt for those that do. It just strikes me as a strictly professional concern, and I am pretty much committed to the path of being an amateur game designer. My audience is me. Anyone else who happens to like the games I write is welcome to buy them and play them and enjoy them, but I'm not beholden to them in any way.

(Note: By "amateur" I don't mean "makes no money," I just mean "primarily done for one's own amusement, rather than as a profession.")

As to your complaints about indie games: Well, there they are. The last two seem like perfectly okay things to base your buying decisions off of.

I am a little sad that they are not useful to me as a marketer, but that's my own account.

yrs--
--Ben

heh, yeah, well if your you're own audience, you're in good shape.

If you are into something more crunchy, Burning Wheel (http://www.burningwheel.org/) might be your thang. Its got tons of bang for your buck.

You wrote: "Where are the character hooks, the plot ideas, the setting?"

The best settings are the ones I make with my players. Plot ideas and hooks, these are things I've never had trouble with coming up with on my own. I don't want to pay for 'em.

Yeah, I keep meaning to pick up Burning Wheel. I do like setting though. A good one can be fun to read, like a novel.

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Upanishadic goodness..

No Puraña?

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